La Défense + Jacques Gréber

La Défense, the giant business center at the end of Paris’ grande axe stands as an iconic reflection of dream-image of postwar modernism. Initiated in the mid-1950’s by a state-controlled development agency, according to the 1933 Athens Charter, the master plan was designed for maximum density of office and residential use. The complex would be served by an extensive networks of roads meeting in a central roundabout laying beneath the main pedestrian esplanade. Thus direct access to the basements of the buildings would be assured.

Chantier de la Défense (Cnit)
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This modernist wonder has connections to Ottawa own ambitious postwar urban planning. The first skyscraper constructed, as the ESSO Standard Building designed by French architect and planner Jacques Gréber and his son Pierre. .

And, like Ottawa’s own tragic urban renewal projects, such as LeBreton Flats, la Défense required extensive expropriation. In this case over 8,000 ‘sub-standard” dwellings were demolished.

The Esso Standard was a spectacle of modernism, which fittingly, was featured in Jacques Tati’s Play Time – a marvelous satiric critique of the dislocation and empty busyness of modern life.

PLAY TIME Jacques Tati
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The scale of the project was immense, and the master plan would later be adapted, under the approval of uber-modernist Jacques Pompidou, to allow for bigger and more individual buildings. Now exclusively office space la Défense would total a mind-boggling 1,500,000 m2.